It's Officially Time for the White House to Find a New Fake Reason for Stalling those Pending FTAs

Back in December, an enterprising reporter asked then-White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs why the President was only advocating congressional passage of the US-Korea FTA instead of pushing full-steam-ahead on all three completed-and-signed US FTAs. Gibbs quickly responded by blaming the FTAs' stagnation on the new "Tea Party Republicans":
Gibbs conceded Friday there was considerable Democratic opposition to the Colombia deal, adding that there are doubts about whether newly-elected, tea party-affiliated Republicans would be enthusiastic about trade pacts. Gibbs called them "not your country-club Republicans."

He added that there is no firm timeline for pushing the deal, "or, for that matter, the Panama agreement."Gibbs certainly wasn't alone in pushing this meme. Indeed even some on the right also ignorantly assumed that tea partiers, and the Republican politicians that they swept into office last year, were stark raving protectionists. On the other hand, some more enlightened analysts (including your humble correspondent) quickly rebutted these unfounded allegations about the new GOP freshman class in Congress by citing not trite, partisan/media-induced stereotypes but, you know, actual facts like: (i) support for free trade is perfectly in line with Tea Party support for smaller government, lower taxes and the free market; (ii) Tea Party favorites like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, as well as Tea Party organizations like Americans for Prosperity and the Tea Party Express, loudly support free trade; and (iii) almost none of the new GOP freshman ran on a protectionist platform.

Well, once again, we were right and they were wrong. (Shocking, I know.)

A few weeks ago, new GOP Congressmen Tom Reed (R-NY) and Rick Berg (R-ND) drafted a letter to the White House urging President Obama to expressly support congressional efforts to pass the three pending FTAs with Colombia, Panama and South Korea within the next six months. The full letter is available here (and some news reports are here and here). As you can see, it's a pretty straightforward expression of broad support for free trade (and not just exports or FTAs, either), and considering that 66 of 87 - a whopping 78%! - of all GOP freshmen signed on to the Reed-Berg letter, it's abundantly clear that that the White House's and others' claims/fears about "tea party Republicans" and protectionism were totally unfounded.

Now, some critics might argue that this is hardly a resounding exclamation of GOP support for free trade because 21 frosh didn't sign the letter, but these critics would be dead wrong for several reasons, including:

More than three-fourths of new GOP members were willing to go out on a limb to sign a general letter supporting free trade and the pending FTAs, even though there is no actual implementing legislation on the table (and thus no pressure from leadership or tangible data/law to support their stance). Considering the flak to which this public statement of principles will (needlessly) expose these most-vulnerable of House Members from protectionism-peddlers in the DCCC and elsewhere, and considering that the other side is pressing these very same guys to jump on the protectionism bandwagon, these numbers are pretty darn impressive.

If you look at the breakdown of signers and non-signers (pasted below; yellow/bold is for signers), you see pretty quickly that about 15 of the 22 non-signers are in very difficult, traditionally trade-skeptical districts (rustbelt, textiles, etc) that would make voting for an FTA pretty politically difficult in even the best of times. So that leaves only about seven folks from states like AL, MS, NH, TN, VA, and WA that shouldn't have a lot of anti-trade constituents and thus should've signed onto the letter. Count these folks as the only "disappointments" of the bunch, and that represents only 8% of the entire gang. Moreover, there are several folks from trade skeptical states like Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania who did sign on. (Again, pretty darn impressive.) Hopefully, in the coming months some of the non-signers will learn more about the issue (here's a great start), ditch the protectionist myths, Big Government and crony capitalism, and come around on the issue. (And I strongly suspect that many of them will too if/when their votes are needed.)

The breakdown also shows that Tea Party favorites like Allen West, Tim Scott, Dan Benishek and Kristi Noem are all on board - another strong signal that the "Tea Party protectionism" meme is absolute bunk.

Finally, from a big picture perspective, this is undeniably good news for the future of not only those pending FTAs but also US trade policy more generally. I'd guess that the Democrats that these GOP freshmen replaced were at least 75-25 against free trade (esp. those 06-08 Dem freshmen who campaigned on, and championed, protectionism - yikes were they bad), and they were probably much worse than that. Indeed, only 4% of all House Democrats in the 110th Congress opposed the House resolution to suspend "fast track" consideration of (and effectively kill) the US-Colombia FTA. So to get 67 new members to wholeheartedly embrace free trade is a very, very good sign.

Now, if only we could get the White House to join these new House members and strongly support a bold US free trade agenda. Fortunately, with today's letter, the President is running out of excuses for why he can't/won't.

Related

US trade policy is a mess right now. Preference programs and worker retraining programs have expired and pending FTAs with Korea, Colombia and Panama - completed and signed more than four years ago - remain unratified. And, of course, when the stench of failure wafts into the room, Washington's fingers quickly start pointing.

In all the hoopla surrounding the ongoing soap opera that is US-Korea FTA, many of us have lost sight of another completed-and-signed-yet-still-not-implemented-for-no-good-reason deal - the US-Colombia FTA. Fortunately for us, the WSJ's Mary Anastasia O'Grady helpfully reminds us today about Colombia. Her column is definitely worth reading in full, but here are my favorite parts:

With both the House and Senate poised to vote on, and approve, pending US FTAs with Colombia, Korea and Panama tomorrow, it seemed like a good time to provide some recent must-read items to get you caught up to speed:

It's been pretty common knowledge for a while now that congressional consideration of pending US FTAs with South Korea, Colombia and Panama wouldn't happen before Congress' summer break (woo hoo!) August recess due to the unnecessary impasse between the White House and congressional Republicans about Trade Adjustment Assistance.

[Ed note: This is the third of a three-part series in which I'll review the joint FTA-TAA legislation proposed by the Obama administration and Senate Democrats last week. Familiarity with the White House's brilliant plan and recent events is presumed.

As you may have heard, the White House and congressional Republicans are currently battling behind closed doors over a way forward for for the pending US free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. National Journal [$] reports on the latest developments (emphasis mine):

It's actually kinda sad that a study showing that the reduction or elimination of nations' bilateral/regional trade barriers results in more trade (exports and imports) among them is a much-needed addition to the trade policy debate, but, well, it is. And, as usual, Cato's Dan Griswold has us covered with a great new paper.

OK, imagine you're the President of the United States. You're finally back from a really embarrassing meeting with the President of Korea who tells you in no uncertain terms that the (relatively insignificant) changes you've demanded re: the US-Korea FTA are a complete non-starter. So what's the first public thing you do on KORUS when you get back stateside? Oh, of course, you meet with the one House group utterly opposed to the KORUS - and all other

American labor leaders quite often like to claim that they generally support "free trade" - just not this particular free trade agreement - because of some specific problem (or series of problems) that negotiators failed to resolve in the deal. Usually, the unions' "go-to flaw" covers what they deem to be insufficient labor protections in the FTA partner's market which, if not resolved, would hurt poor foreign workers. This "concern" paints the unions not as selfish thugs using political muscle to shield their antiquated industries and